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November 03, 2006
Microsoft & Novell Collaboration
Today Microsoft and Novell entered a strategic partnership that will bridge the divide between Open Source Software and Proprietary Software.
The components that make up this new alliance are quite a combination to say the least. One of the core results as Jeff Jaffe Executive VP at Novell stated "As a result of this collaboration, customers will now be able to run virtualized Linux on Windows or virtualized Windows on Linux". This is nothing new so to speak as we have been able to do most of this for a fair amount of time now though "Microsoft will purchase a quantity of coupons from Novell that entitle the recipient to a one-year subscription for maintenance and updates to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server." meaning that Microsoft will effectively officially support Novell SUSE Linux in-house, now that is news.
On the Novell side of virtualisation Suse Linux Enterprise 10 comes complete with XEN 3.0 the Open Source Virtualisation platform, whilst Microsoft's upcoming Longhorn Server will include its Virtual Server product out of the box. This will no doubt see both Xen and VS have greater interoperability and migration streams between the two as "IDC projects the overall market for virtual machine software revenue to be more than $1.8 billion by 2009, and the overall market for distributed system management software to be $10.2 billion by 2010"
Among the other sections of the agreement between the two firms include that "Microsoft will work with Novell and actively contribute to several open source software projects, including projects focused on Office file formats and Web services management. Second, Microsoft will not assert its patents against individual noncommercial open source developers."
More details on the Office file formats and patent agreements that form the other parts of this collaboration are available from the Microsoft and Novell press releases.
Posted by Stephen at November 3, 2006 11:52 PM
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